The present invention relates to baseboard management controllers (BMC) and, more specifically, to a provision of an external list of sensors on a platform to a BMC.
In computing, a BMC is a specialized service processor that monitors the physical state of a computer, network server or other hardware device using sensors and by way of communications with system administrators through an independent connection. In some cases, the BMC is provided as a part or component of an intelligent platform management interface (IPMI) and may be configured in the motherboard or main circuit board of the device to be monitored.
The sensors of a BMC generally measure internal physical variables. These include, but are not limited to, temperature, humidity, power-supply voltage, fan speeds, communications parameters and operating system (OS) functions. If, as a result of the measurements, it is determined that any of these variables stray outside specified limits, the system administrators are or may be notified so that corrective action can be taken. The monitored device can be power cycled or rebooted as necessary. In this way, a single administrator can remotely manage numerous servers and other devices simultaneously, saving on the overall operating cost of the network and helping to ensure its reliability.
When a BMC boots, the BMC needs a list of sensors and sensor attributes to build its associated sensor data repository. Currently, this is achieved by inclusion of the sensors and attributes in the BMC source code. However, this leads to required updates to program code every time a platform is revised.